Essays in Idleness

Frexit, Swexit, Netherlexit; Espanexit, Portugexit; Czexit, Slexit, Luxembexit — they’ll all want out now, till the European Union is down to just Germany and Greece. And maybe Scotland. Can we leave, too? Do you have to be a member to quit? Let’s have a referendum on everything, and everyone vote Leave.

There is great blather this morning about the triumph of democracy. If the EU’s executive were elected by the unwashed masses, it would be no different. It would be no closer to any classical British conception of “responsible government,” in which the executive is accountable to “the peeple,” whether starkly or through the romancing smoke and mirrors of Crown in Parliament. No such arrangement is possible once bureaucracy has spread through the whole sprawling body politic, twitching and prone.

Balancing, or rather, contesting this, we have the predictable liberal freak-out on the triumph of “far right parties,” which is equally risible. Fifty-two percent of the current British electorate is hardly Far Right Haters, or if they are they might have accomplished something by now. In current circumstances such terms are meaningless. There is populist discontent with opposite things — with too much taxes, and not enough welfare. The most anti-mass-immigration parties are conventionally nanny-statist, and only promise to dole more to their constituents from the money that closed borders might save. When in fact we are in debt above our ear lobes.

Are people racist? Of course. Nationalism is racist, by definition. People are racist; always were and always will be. “White people are racist” is racist, as well as true. Liberals are the worst. They are absolutely obsessed with race, colour, and creed; with the manipulation of “identity politics.” Thus they are constantly promoting racism.

Sound statesmen do what they can to avoid this malicious bilge. They will be, by nature, “elitists,” seeking conditions for good order, domestic and foreign peace — for the rule of just law, and a diffused prosperity. This means, usually, changing the subject of political discourse; for “the peeple” (they include me, I’m afraid) are more interested in vengeance, and cash. This would be true at all levels of government.

It is true, I am delighted with the Brexit win. I prefer a pint of 568 millilitres, to a pint of 500 mL. Yet too, I grieve the obsolescence of the Scottish pinnt or joug, which was nearly three times the size of the Imperial, and could be sensibly fractioned into chopins and mutchkins as well as gills; and more generally for government on a much smaller scale.

You cannot order lunch for 500 million people; or rather, you can but it is awkward. You cannot order lunch for 64 million, ditto. Decisions touching upon everyday life should be made on an everyday scale, where relations between cause and effect are perceptible, and “the peeple” can learn from their blundering mistakes, their abject stupidities, and sharping moral failures. To my mind, the downsizing has a long way to go.

The purpose of large entities, such as the EU or the Roman Empire, is to keep roads open to trade, and the long frontiers of civilization defended; to provide circuit courts and enforce criminal law. This is the most secular power can achieve: a chaste and impartial protection racket, too big to challenge. It is already a tall order. Pile it too high — put all the weight at the top — and it will surely topple.